


Forsaken

by qwanderer



Series: Fallen!Gabe [3]
Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Fallen Angel Gabriel (Good Omens), Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-29
Updated: 2019-12-29
Packaged: 2021-02-24 18:00:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,711
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22022110
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/qwanderer/pseuds/qwanderer
Summary: “What is it, Beel?” Lucifer said, eyes narrowed as he looked over the two of them.Beelzebub’s nose wrinkled at the shortening of their name, but they didn’t protest. “This piece of flotsam washed up on shore. Figured you’d want to know.”
Series: Fallen!Gabe [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1463686
Comments: 2
Kudos: 68





	Forsaken

Gabriel hurt.

Gabriel was not accustomed to hurting.

He was also not accustomed to words failing him. But words failed him, thinking of how to describe this hurt. An ache, an itch? He didn’t know what those were like. They’d always sounded unpleasant, and beneath him. 

A… longing? Emptiness. Hunger.

Burning. 

There was a burning core of him, and it niggled at him, tempted, cajoled,  _ demanded _ that he reach out and…

Do what, exactly?

Gabriel hated this. 

He also hated the way his feet made a wet noise on the uneven, dirty floor. His nice shoes. Or. Shoes that used to be nice, before he’d taken an unplanned dunk in sulfur-smelling foulness, which clung to him. So did a fishy smell. 

Gabriel hated fish.

Beelzebub prodded him in the back, driving him forward down the dank hallway, under flickering lights that hurt his eyes. The buzzing of the fixtures permeated his skull, aggravating him, making him want to reach out and…

What?

Gabriel stopped in his tracks, trying to pin down the feeling, trying to make sense of it. He wanted to… push everything away. Everything was too close, too gross, too  _ common _ . Everything here could stand to stay the fuck away from him.

“Move faster,” Beelzebub drawled, boredom and aggravation dripping from their voice, and it made Gabriel want to do the exact opposite. To linger, drag his feet, to spite the demon. 

The other demon.

No! Gabriel was not a demon. He was an archangel. There’d been a mistake. 

But he hurt. Angels weren’t supposed to hurt.

Something was shredding his soul, tearing at it from the inside out, making him feel like a throbbing mess of inflamed tissue, pushing him, prodding him to do something to make it better, driving him to reach out and… 

“What!” he demanded, realizing belatedly that he’d snapped it, aloud, and that in the room they’d just entered stood a throne, and Lucifer was on it. 

Beelzebub cuffed him on the ear, hard. “You don’t talk yet, new fish!” they spat.

Gabriel clenched his jaw.

In an entirely different, but no more pleasant tone, Beelzebub turned to Lucifer and said, “Sire.”

“What is it, Beel?” Lucifer said, eyes narrowed as he looked over the two of them.

Beelzebub’s nose wrinkled at the shortening of their name, but they didn’t protest. “This piece of flotsam washed up on shore. Figured you’d want to know.”

Lucifer’s eyes widened as he looked at Gabriel. He rose slowly and dramatically from the throne, his form at the moment human, his smirking face framed by shining black hair. “Well, well, well. Look at you, brother mine,” he said, stalking towards Gabriel. “I knew you were more like me than you wanted to admit.”

Gabriel drew himself up, looking down his nose at Lucifer. “I’m nothing like you, demon.”

He did his best, but his voice still shook.

Lucifer laughed.

“Gabriel,” he said. “You are everything like me. You’re as much a demon as me. I’m as much an Archangel as you. And you have the stench of pride about you. My favorite sin.”

Gabriel saw red. He wanted to hurt, to destroy.

He reached out with pale pink tendrils of soul stuff, and he  _ burned them _ . Wrapped their wrists and grabbed their necks. Shot poison into their skins, Lucifer’s smooth tanned perfection and Beelzebub’s red and festering visage, with tiny needles. Gabriel could vividly feel each microscopic barb as it sank home and delivered terrible, burning pain.

Pain he could feel. But from the outside. Their pain quieted his, for a glorious, terrible moment. 

Then Lucifer grew long, black claws and slashed through the tendrils, and the pain was all Gabriel’s again. Beelzebub’s fingers bruised his arm as they held him still, but he hardly felt it as his jellyfish limbs stung and oozed.

“Remember what I said about vomiting,” they hissed in his ear.

“On second thought,” Lucifer said, plucking little gelatinous pink bits of Gabriel off his clothes, “you’re a terrible little worm in comparison to me. Absolutely no poise or charm when you’re pushed just the slightest bit.”

Gabriel clenched his jaw, and through a feat of pure willpower, did not vomit again. 

He felt as if he were inside a giant bell as it was being rung. His whole being sang with a discordant mixture of pain and satisfaction, revelation and confusion. He’d reached out with limbs that were no part of any being who was an angel, and he’d inflicted damage. He’d touched demons’ flesh. 

Something inside him still pushed him to do it again, to fight and fight and hurt and hurt.

This wasn’t him! This wasn’t who he was.

Then, with perfect clarity, he remembered his own voice, the snippet of it that the Almighty had played back to him. 

_ Shut your stupid mouth and die already. _

He’d wanted to destroy Aziraphale. He’d wanted to watch Aziraphale burn with the worst pain an angel could endure. Hellfire. Because Aziraphale had ruined his moment. 

This  _ was _ him.

This was  _ him. _

The feelings coursing through him were frustrating and awful and somehow slimy, but they were  _ his _ feelings, and there was some part of him deep down that was whispering  _ “Yessss.” _ Part of him was reveling in it.

Not all of him. He really hated it all, too.

There was a sound like being inside of a monster truck motor as the ignition turned, or like the king of hell had just cleared his throat loudly and impatiently right by your ear while in his own throne room. Gabriel jumped.

“You don’t get to ignore me,” Lucifer said in a dangerously quiet voice. “Our mother has forsaken you, and now you belong to me.”

_ Forsaken. _

Gabriel couldn’t handle the implications of that word right now, so he pushed it aside, glaring at Lucifer. “I don’t,” he told the king of hell. “Belong to you. I will never submit to you.”

His fist clenched at his side, and he glared.

"Hmm," Lucifer said with a mocking little smile. "You’ll get bored without a mission, and you know it. You were always the first in line to volunteer if something needed doing. She called, and you jumped. You won’t do well without a handler."

"I'm not going to answer to  _ you," _ Gabriel said.

Without dignifying that with a reply, Lucifer frowned thoughtfully and then said, "I think you'd do well hobnobbing with actors. Inspiring the kind of pride that drags people down."

He still stood too close to Gabriel, and spoke those last three words slowly and pointedly. Gabriel seethed. 

But the demon king was right.

He couldn’t help himself, and he hated that, but it was the truth. He’d been created to work and not working made him bored, uncomfortable… kind of nuts.

And horribly, he was slowly becoming accustomed to the seething mass of hatred and annoyance inside him, trying to push its way out. 

Gabriel sighed. Mentally broke down the task into its components. He'd need to learn about his subject in order to influence them. He'd need to blend in with the humans around the one he'd been assigned to. And right away, there was one obvious problem.

"How do you do that?" he asked Lucifer, gesturing vaguely at his corporation. "Look human?

Lucifer laughed, and the tone was gleeful with a very well-hidden bitter edge. "You’ll get the hang of it," he said. "Or you won’t." He shrugged languidly.

It seemed like Lucifer was doing his best to keep that bubbling hatred over high heat. 

"Aren't you at all invested in the success of this job you're giving me?" Gabriel asked. "How can I inspire pride like this?" He gestured at the wet tentacles still draped across his head and shoulders. 

The smile fell off Lucifer's face so abruptly that Gabriel found himself questioning whether it had ever really been there at all. 

"You have two weeks to figure it out," the king of hell told him, "or we drag you back here to face the flame, kicking and screaming."

Breath hissed through Gabriel's nose as he held himself back from another physical attack. "That’s not fair."

"No," Lucifer agreed, in a musical, mock-sympathetic tone. "But I make the rules here."

Gabriel silently stared him down. He remembered Lucifer as restless and impatient. And he had limits as to how much he would dance to Lucifer’s tune, even if it was becoming obvious that it hadn’t been a mistake or a glitch, the Almighty wasn’t going to change Her mind and raise him back up. Gabriel was stuck here now. Stuck in Hell, taking orders from the devil.

The devil sighed. “All right, fine,” he said. “It’d be better for the mission if you could blend, so I’ll give you a hint.”

Lucifer brushed aside black curls just far enough for Gabriel to see the tiny white triangles of horns still sprouting from his head.

Gabriel stared, waiting to see if anything else was forthcoming. When there was nothing, when Lucifer simply stood, Gabriel admitted, “I don’t get it.”

“Yeah, you don’t, do you?” Lucifer scoffed. “Pathetic little demon. Find someone else to teach you. Or perish.”

Gabriel turned to the figure at his side, now idly picking their nails. “Beelzebub?”

The prince made a wet, snorting noise and didn’t look at him. “What did I tell you about calling me that now.”

“Fine,” Gabriel huffed. “Your Highness. Please. Help me with this.”

Beelzebub made a moue, then abruptly turned away, speaking over their shoulder. “If you’re looking for a sympathetic demon you’re going to have to look somewhere else.” They rolled their eyes. “To the ends of the Earth, probably.”

Gabriel looked back to Lucifer, who was once more sitting on his throne. Lucifer gave him a gesture, one finger pointing up. It wasn’t entirely clear which finger it was. It was clear that it meant both “fuck you” and “get up there.”

He didn’t know what to do. He needed to go to Earth and start on his mission. He needed help.

Actually, he did know what he needed to do. He just hated to admit to himself that it was the only option. 

He needed to find Aziraphale and his demon accomplice and ask them for help.


End file.
